According to Pedro Almodóvar, there's only one fake element in Raimunda's (Penélope Cruz) body: the bottom. He said that this kind of characters are usually big-bottomed people, and that Cruz is just too stylized.
In Pedro Almodóvar's eleventh film, The Flower of My Secret (1995), the main character (Leo) is criticized for writing a novel about a woman whose husband attempts to rape her daughter and, after the daughter kills him, hides his body in her neighbor's restaurant freezer. Eleven years later, this plot line appears in the narrative of Volver.
No; she was simply hiding in Aunt Paula's house since she faked her own death.
Q
How does it end?
A
Turns out Irene (Carmen Maura), the mother, isn't dead, but has been hiding all these years in the aunt's house. She and Raimunda (Penélope Cruz) confront their past: Irene's husband slept with Raimunda and Paula is his daughter (ie. Paula is Raimunda's sister as well as daughter); Agustina's mother had an affair with Irene's husband and she was killed with him in the fire, which Irene started after finding out the truth about Raimunda's sexual abuse. Mother and daughter (Irene and Raimunda) are finally reconciled.Paula finds out what her mother did with Paco's body and Irene goes to take care of dying Agustina, who believes her to be a ghost.
Q
What does the title mean?
A
It is the Spanish verb that means "to return". The V's should be pronounced halfway between the English V and English B, so it sound something like "bole-bare".